Business Communication Memorandum
Date: Spring 2017
To: ****
From: ****
RE: Virtual Business Professional (VBP) project: “Electronic communication and social media in organizations.”
Project Goals
This project emphasizes the development of critical-thinking, communication, and team-building skills among students with the following specific goals:
1. Help you learn how to collaborate in virtual teams
2. Introduce you to a virtual communication platform
3. Have you assess your effectiveness in the virtual collaboration process
4. Teach you leadership skills in virtual collaboration projects
5. Provide you an opportunity to examine, analyze, and assess external online communication practices of an organization and identify recommendations
6. Collaboratively write a professional report about your findings as well as create a virtual team presentation.
Project Task
1. Identify an organization that has a robust online presence, such as a web page, Facebook page, Twitter feed, customer blog, and so on.
2. Analyze the quality of these mechanisms in terms of building and maintaining the organization’s reputation. Identify major conclusions about your company’s online presence.
3. Write a report that introduces the organization and its online communication tools, provides an analysis of its online presence, and offers recommendations for improvements.
4. You must use the criteria from your reading (Dowling &Moran, 2012) to evaluate the company’s reputation (built in or bolted on) and provide evidence for your conclusions. Your report must identify whether the organization is conveying its core values through its social media use.
5. Provide recommendations how the company can improve its online presence that address each of your conclusions; as needed, provide additional evidence for these recommendations.
Additional instructions and grading rubric for the report will be provided to you on IBM Connections platform.
Team Composition
You will be joining a team comprised of members from different schools and courses. Your membership in the team will be randomly assigned. Your instructor will provide you with your team assignment and member contact information.
Communication Platform[1]
IBM Connections will be used for all virtual team communication. Members of the virtual teams will be placed in “Communities,” where they can exchange documents, edit documents, and create Wikis and discussion forums. Connections also enables students to hold virtual meetings, chat, and email members of their Communities. You will be given detailed, easy-to-follow instructions how to use Connections.
Grading
The grading for most of this assignment is based on your participation in the project and completion of all of the assigned steps. Your instructors will provide you more information about the particular grading scheme for your class. The project activities and due dates are due by the end of due date (midnight) and are listed below by project week:
PROJECT SCHEDULE AND ACTIVITIES
Week / Individual tasks and Group Activities / Readings / Points / Due date1 / · Complete MBTI assessment online https://www.16personalities.com/
· Complete pre-project survey / Make sure to complete the assessment before you complete the survey. / 2.5 / Feb 20
1 / Individual Meeting Preparation 1
· Create your profile
· Read your team members’ profiles
· Contact your team members about a convenient meeting times / Ferrazzi, K. (2014). Getting Virtual Teams Right. Harvard Business Review, December 2014. / 5 / Feb 22
1 / Meeting Summary 1 (Contact with Teammates)
Hold meeting #1. Create a document “Meeting Summary 1” that includes the following items:
· Team member names
· Team member study interests, professional interests, hobbies
· Best meeting times / 5 / Feb 27
2 / Individual Meeting Preparation 2
Create a document titled “Meeting preparation 2.” Write your thoughts about the following:
· Team rules
· Needed team roles
· Communication preferences
· Your own strengths working in teams based on your own MBTI profile
· Discussion of team member strengths based on their MBTI profiles / Molinsky, A. & Gundling, E. (2016). How to Build Trust on Your Cross-Cultural Team. Harvard Business Review, June 2016.
· / 5 / March 1
2 / Meeting Summary 2 (Team Charter)
Hold meeting #2. Complete the team charter using the Team Charter Template (provided below).
· Include a discussion of projected team challenges and ways to overcome them based on MBTI profiles. / 5 / March 6
3 / Individual Meeting Preparation 3
Take 1 to 2 hours to identify an organization of interest* that your team could focus on. Prepare a document “Meeting Preparation 3” that includes the following:
· Describe the organization’s online presence (website, company blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, other social networking websites)
· Explain how this company could make an interesting project for the team
*Each team member does this individually so that the entire team has good options to choose from / Dowling, G. and Moran, P. (2012). Corporate Reputations: Built In or Bolted On? California Management Review, 54(2), 25-42. / 5 / March 8
3 / Meeting Summary 3 (Project Plan)
Hold meeting #3
· Summarize the strengths and weaknesses of each company you discussed
· Explain why you chose a single company to focus on
· Describe the goals and scope for your project
· Provide an action plan with assignments and due dates for each team member / 5 / March 13
4 / Individual Meeting Preparation 4
· What have you accomplished since your last meeting?
· What challenges have you encountered?
· What are the options to deal with these challenges? / Wilson, H. J., Guinan PJ, Parise S., Bruce D. Weinberg B.D. (2011). What is your social media strategy? Harvard Business Review, July-August 2011. / 5 / March 15
4 / Meeting Summary 4 (Progress Report)
Hold meeting #4
· Summarize your team’s progress
· Update your action plan with individual assignments / 5 / March 20
6 / Draft of your formal report
· Post a draft for team members to review and make changes. (It doesn’t have to be complete but it has to include all team member contributions identified by name) / 5 / March 29
6 / Final Report
· Post Final report on Connections and Turnitin site (login information will be provided) / 50 / April 3
6 / · Complete post-project survey
· Complete Team reflection activity / Team reflection activity must be completed to receive credit for the project / 2.5 / April 3
COLLABORATIVE WRITING IN VIRTUAL TEAMS: Task and grading distribution
· Individual Meeting Preparation (4). You will be involved in four team meetings conducted on Connections. You will have individual activities to complete in preparation for each meeting.
· Team Meeting Reports (4). After each team meeting, you will complete four activities as instructed.
· Formal Report. Your team will report the findings from your investigation into an organization’s digital presence and your recommendations for the company.
Grading Breakdown· Individual meeting preps (4) / 20
· Team meeting reports (4) / 20
· Surveys (pre- and post-) (2) / 5
· Draft report (1) / 5
· Formal Report / 50
Total / 100% / 100
APPENDIX A: Team Charter Template
Team Charter for [INSERT TEAM NAME]Purpose (What is the purpose of being a team?): / Goals (What are measurable and specific goals that support and link to the purpose?):
Team Member Roles and Responsibilities
Name & email / Role / Task
Team Rules
Ground Rules (see examples provides below):
1. Meetings will start on time (penalties will be enforced for lateness)
2. We will have an agenda for each meeting
3. Work responsibilities must be fulfilled on time.
4. Consensus will be used for decision-making. / Communication Protocol:
Primary mode of communication:
Frequency of communication:
Response time:
Who is primary communication coordinator?
Who will communicate what to whom (meaning, not all members necessarily need all information):
What strategies will you implement that are specific to cultural differences in your team as identified by your individual and country MBTI profiles?
1
[1] All participants who complete VBP project will receive IBM Collaborative Computing Scholar badge that can be added to students’ LinkedIn profiles.